Derek Dunivan

Munchkins in the Land of Ozz
Metal's heaviest show through a young band's eyes

It's ninety-something degrees in Hartford, Connecticut, and the air conditioning is busted on Pure Rubbish's crappy, problem-plagued RV. Seventeen-year-old lead guitarist and singer Derek Dunivan admits to not having had a shower in a week. His fifteen-year-old brother, Evan, the drummer, says he hasn't changed his underwear for days. They've been living like this for three months now -- these events take place during the summer of 2001 -- crossing America with Ozzfest, driving hundreds of miles at a stretch to play a handful of songs to sometimes hostile crowds at an ungodly hour of the morning. On top of all that, their mother is following them in a rented Ford Escort.

Still, the Dunivan brothers couldn't be happier.

"Ozzfest is the best thing that ever happened to us," Evan declares. "It's sea-donkey heaven," Derek says in an awestruck voice. "A twenty-four-hour party."

Sea donkey is this year's Ozzfest slang for groupie, though the derivation of the phrase remains shrouded in mystery.

"Did you check out those donkeys after the show this morning?" Derek asks. "I was signing their titties."

Derek, a waifishly slender kid with bleached hair, tight pants and an armful of bracelets, is a glam anomaly among the ferociously pierced and tattooed frontmen who rule the new-metal scene at Ozzfest. But neither his androgynous appearance nor his tender years -- and not even his mother's watchful presence -- are a hindrance in his search for the female companionship that is the male rock star's due.

Derek does most of his donkey hunting in the company of Anthony Focx, rhythm guitarist for the band Beautiful Creatures. That band's old green bus is Party Central on the second-stage lot, a hotbed of sea-donkey activity. Derek, who's about as worldly in these matters as it's possible for a seventeen-year-old to be, seems bewildered by some of the debauchery he's witnessed. One day, he says, three girls started "getting wacky" in the Creatures' bus. Soon they were naked and putting on a show.

"It was fun," he says, laughing nervously. "It was like Caligula or something."

While Derek and Anthony are off showing the sea donkeys of central Connecticut a good time, Evan and bassist Mike McWilliams (rhythm guitarist Jarrett Gardner fills out the band) head out into the night with a girl named Jana (not her real name). Her connection to Ozzfest is both vague (she wears a pass and claims to be "friends" with lots of bands) and highly tenuous (she's been banished from the festival for unspecified problematic behavior and needs to avoid certain people in authority). They make a quick tour of the second-stage parking lot, paying visits to the well-appointed buses of some other, better-established bands, staying long enough only for the guys to express their envy of the large TVs and other furnishings. Nothing symbolizes a band's status at Ozzfest more clearly than their mode of transportation. Pure Rubbish have four members, a tour manager and one driver/drum tech packed in a single tiny RV; Black Sabbath get seven buses.

From the parking lot, Mike, Evan and Jana continue on to the Marilyn Manson show in the main arena, standing in front of the stage for two songs. Then Jana says they can crash a barbecue at the Papa Roach bus.

Unfortunately, when the Pure Rubbish posse arrives at the main-stage parking lot, there's no barbecue in sight. They run into Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor, who's riding in a golf cart, unrecognized by the crowd without his dreadlock-enhanced mask. When Jana asks if there's going to be a party on the Slipknot bus, Taylor says that the band is heading to Boston to find a hotel and relax. "I'm just gonna get naked and watch porn for nine hours," he says wearily, like a guy who's earned the right.

So they wander back to the second-stage parking lot, pinballing aimlessly around the Ozzfest grounds like teenagers loitering anywhere in small-town America, wandering from McDonald's to the minimall and back to McDonald's again, looking for the party. Except that in small-town America, you generally don't run into anyone from Slipknot, or a girl wearing vinyl hot pants who looks like a vampire and has "Rape Me Manson" scrawled across her back in big, black letters. But sometimes, even at Ozzfest, even on a hot summer night, you can look everywhere and never find the party.

Later, after the band has finally regrouped, Tracy Dunivan -- Derek and Evan's mother -- boards the RV. She's in a surprisingly good mood for a woman who's spent most of her day sitting alone in her rental car with the air conditioner blasting, taking care of business on a cell phone. She looks on with weary amusement as Derek ogles a photo of pop singer Willa Ford in Stuff magazine.

"I dig this girl," he says. "And you can print that."

"Why?" asks Tracy. "So she'll read it and want to go out with you?"

"Maybe," says Dere - Rolling Stone Magazine